Now Let's Talk of Graves (9 page)

“Oh, my Lord!” said Kitty.

“Fool ain't gonna see dawn,” said the driver.

“You're probably right,” Sam agreed. “How much farther till we're home?”

“Six or seven more blocks,” the driver guessed.

“Pray.” Kitty punched Zoe. “Sit up and pray that your daddy makes it home in one piece.”

Zoe, who had dozed off, groaned, “Oh, lordy.”

*

G.T. didn't know what had come over her.

Usually she just followed the calls on the ambulance's radio. That's what she was supposed to do. But tonight, for the past half hour, she'd had this itchy feeling. A little voice inside kept whispering things.

“G.T., where the hell you think you're going?”

That wasn't the little voice. That was Arkadelphia Lolley, who was her partner tonight. The 300-pound white man from Tallulah bit down on his words real hard, the way people from north Louisiana did.

“We supposed to be sitting right here till we get a call to go. Covering our section. What exactly is it you have in mind? You hungry? Is it some oysters that you want? A po'boy?”

“That's what's on your mind, Ark. I can't even begin to explain what's on mine.”

“Well, I just hope you tell 'em it was you who was driving when they call us in and chew us out for not being where we supposed to. What we gone do we get a call we can't get to in time 'cause you got some weird bug up your butt? 'Specially after we lost that little bitty sucker yesterday got up and ran? You think we ain't got enough trouble?”

“It's me who'll do the explaining,” G.T. said, thinking that that was going to be awfully hard to do. She could just hear herself saying: Unh-huh, and then this voice in my head said: This here's the goddess speaking, get yourself on over to Uptown. Right. Left. Left. Right. Now keep on heading toward St. Charles.
Good
girl.

Like I was her baby child.

*

All of a sudden Church stopped. He gave no signal, no warning, just braked right in the middle of an intersection.

“Oh, my God,” Kitty moaned as they pulled on around, double-parking a little way up in the next block of St. Charles. “Oh, Lord, what now?”

Kitty and Sam and the driver jumped out. Zoe stayed put.

Church stumbled from the Mercedes, leaned against its side.

“He's two blocks from home,” Kitty muttered, lifting her pink silk that was already ruined in the quickening rain. “You'd think he could wait to take a leak.”

“And that he could get out of the middle of the street,” said the driver.

It was then that the Buick charged from out of nowhere. Or at least that's how it seemed in the wet, moonless night. The thirty-year-old car with the grille full of chrome teeth lunged from the river side of St. Charles like a charging dinosaur.

“Church!!!” Kitty screamed.

And then there was a long silence, the kind that goes hand in hand with disaster.

Sam had seen hideous things happen before. They were always in slow motion. They took forever. You could reach out and stop them.

If you could just make yourself move.

If you could only get there in time.

Sam ran.

She pulled up her skirt, kicked off her high-heeled silver sandals, and sprinted full out.

The face of her lover Sean, killed four years before by a drunk driver, flew through her mind.

She couldn't save Sean, but she could save Church. If she could just run faster. Faster. Faster.

But she wasn't Superwoman. She couldn't reach Church in time.

He was leaning over—maybe to throw up, maybe to tie his shoe. Whatever it was, it was the last thing Church Lee would ever do. The lumbering dinosaur of a Buick chewed right into him and took his head in one bite.

*

“Jehoshaphat!” said Arkadelphia as G.T. pulled up to the intersection. “Did you see that? Man popped up, his head squashed just like a watermelon. Holy jehoshaphat!”

*

The driver of the dark Buick threw the car into reverse. Rubber fried. The big car swerved, just missed a royal palm. It grazed the rear of G.T.'s ambulance. There was the sound of tinkling glass.

“Oh, my Lord!” Arkadelphia groaned. “We're in for it now.”

G.T. threw her door wide and jumped out.

The Buick straightened, tapped the ambulance again in a second pass, then roared across the grassy boulevard divider which locals called the neutral ground. The Buick crossed the streetcar tracks running down the middle of the neutral ground, turned, and headed back the other way, back downtown.

“Did you see him?” Sam yelled at G.T., who nodded. The two of them stood on the streetcar tracks with hands out empty, rain pouring down their faces.

They had both seen the driver for an instant, for a flash, inside the big, mothering Buick. Wearing a carnival mask.

Seven

SIX WEEKS LATER Sam found herself once again on a plane about to land in New Orleans. They were almost in—the flat, timbered terrain giving way to the huge saucer of Lake Pontchartrain.

She hadn't thought she'd be back so soon, though her thoughts often turned to the city, to Kitty and her family, who'd been doubled over with grief when she'd left—and to Harry.

He'd called her a couple of times in Atlanta, had sent her flowers once—violets, which she thought was awfully sweet, as was he—but he was also far too young, even for a flirtation, and far too far away.

But now, as soon as she stepped off the plane, he was going to be right in her face. He'd called and said he'd meet her at the gate, and she'd said fine because there were a few things they needed to get squared away.

Kitty had called the week before, an absolute wreck. It seems as though in settling Church's estate they'd found he had a million dollars' worth of life insurance payable to his daughter Zoe—but Tench Young, his old friend who'd written the policy, said, unh-uh, no way. Tench would be happy to pay the quarter-million policy Church had carried for many years, but the additional three-quarters Church had bought six months before he met his Maker in the middle of St. Charles, forget it.

Tench said any policy held less than two years was subject to investigation.

Investigation of
what
?
Sam demanded.

Church's death, Kitty answered.

Does he think he killed himself? Does he think Church was driving the Buick? What the hell do the police say?

Death by misadventure. They're working on it.

And until they catch the bastard who perpetrated the hi
t-
and-run, Tench gets to keep his money?

He's sicked Harry Zack on us.

What?

Harry's running Preferred Reliance's investigation.

“It's a hell of a thing, Harry,” she said to him, now walking down your standard gateway-to-hell airport passageway.

He tried to take her garment bag, but she shrugged him off. She didn't need someone who looked like JFK, Jr., in a beat-up old raincoat doing her favors, not if he was going to be on the other side. Because that's why she was here—to see what she could do to help Kitty get Tench (and Harry) off her back, settle this issue, get Zoe her money, let the Lees get on with their lives.

He kept walking, then finally shrugged.

“It's only business.” Though inside he wasn't thrilled about Uncle Tench's assignment either, except it had brought Sam back.

“I thought you were an old friend of the Lees', of Kitty's. Wasn't your big sister in Kitty's court when she was—doo-dah—Queen of the May? Doesn't that make them like blood sisters?”

“Queen of Comus. That's right, we're all old friends.”

“Guess I have a hard time seeing that, since Kitty says you're the one going around asking the rude questions, looking for dirt on Church.”

“And getting precious few answers.”

“So give it up.”

He shot her a look. “Do me a favor, Sam. Don't bust my chops.”

“You could have said no, thank you very much, Uncle Tench. You could have passed.”

Harry thought about that for a minute, about that day Tench had called him into his big-as-a-battleship corner office. He'd been running his hands through his blond waves, saying: Son, ol' Church was a friend, but you understand, this is bi'nis.
Big
bi'nis. He was chewing on his five-buck cigar. His little eyes were pale and cold, reminding Harry that he'd never really liked his mother's brother much in the first place. Tench had said, Now, I don't begrudge his darling little girl that first quarter mil, that's the kind of bite we're set up for. But this other three-quarters? No way, son. Tench hitched up his pants, adjusted himself, went on. There's no way a man takes out that kind of monster new insurance right 'fore he dies, 'less he
knows
somethin'. Don't ever'thing show up in the pre-insurance medical. He still
could
have had a preexisting condition would turn that claim to mush no matter what the cause of death. The postmortem don't say jack—you know that was a lick and a promise. Now, I
know
the man was killed by a hit-and-run. I
know
that. But there's somethin' here not on the up and up, either prior to—or in the doing. And you're gonna find that thing, save us the big bucks. Ain't you, son?

It had crossed Harry's mind to say at that juncture, Thass right, yes suh, boss, to do the Stepin Fetchit routine they'd taught him as the Only White Boy at Grambling. Yeah, Grambling had taught him a lot—which was a surprise, since he'd meant going there as a joke after he'd gotten himself thrown out of Choate, then flunked out of his first year at Harvard, bad,
bad
boy, Grambling had been his answer to his father's plea to go to school somewhere, anywhere. But once the brothers had gotten over the fact that he was white, this boy who'd grabbed up a three-year track scholarship—Fastest White Boy in the South, they called him—they'd taught him moves and jive and street smarts. They'd taught him how to lay down a mean, driving rhythm. Taught him if a man keeps calling you out, get the first lick in, no matter what, and
make it count.
Yes, Grambling had been a four star educational experience. He learned he didn't know diddle about being
bad.
Learned a whole lot about being a decent human being. He also learned when to bob and when to weave and when to cut his losses.

That's what Harry had really thought, the day Tench laid all that bull on him about Church Lee: He ought to cut his losses. Tell Tench to shove this job and stroll. He'd had his mouth open to do that when he thought, But wait!

Where'd it gotten him, that decision he'd made when he was a youngster, when he'd thrown over all that Uptown, Garden District, blue-blood bull that was his heritage? Got him fifteen years, three nickels, of driving cabs, working rigs, process serving—all to support his songwriting, music-making jones—what'd he have to show for it?

A handful of demo tapes, that's what he had, when everybody he knew was married, renovating double shotgun houses uptown in the Lower Garden, bitching about their 2.5 kids' tuition, going to tennis camp, working on their serves. Were they so wrong? Maybe
he'd
screwed up. Maybe he ought to try it, wear a suit and tie, work his way up some ladder, saying,
Yes suh, boss.

Now he looked at Sam, questioning his motivation and thought, What the hell? But instead of saying that, he reached for her bag again,
Here, let me take that.

No thanks, she answered, a pretty woman walking about two steps ahead of him, shouldering a carryon that looked like it weighed fifty pounds. She strutted like a dude in boot camp with something to prove.

“Are you sure?” he asked again.

“That's all right. I got this far.”

“It's tough to be a gentleman these days.”

That slowed her down. She laughed—she had a
great
laugh—and handed him the bag.

“It's been so long since I've seen a gentleman, I forgot what y'all look like.”

Harry relaxed. Maybe she wasn't going to hold this business against him after all.

“You want to go by the Central Grocery, grab some lunch, sit down and talk about this thing?”

She nodded yes.

They were down the escalator now, across the lower level, passing the civilians at the luggage bays who hadn't learned yet how to pack.

The automatic doors slid open, and they stepped out into the warm Gulf air. Sam took a deep breath. The air felt like hot sheets and warm perfume.

Down, girl, down, she reminded herself. This was business.

But New Orleans air made you think like that. Whereas back in Atlanta, an hour earlier, it had been chilly. A piss-and-vinegar late-March morning, it was the perfect kind of day to fly over to New Orleans, take names, and kick a few asses. She'd help her friend Kitty get this insurance mess straightened out, chomp down some crawfish, and be back in her own bed the next night, night after at the outside.